🧙Player 1

🕹️Level0: The Quest

• Mission: “Did vegetation in the Rocky Mountains maintain functional stability from the LGM to the present?”
• Requirements:
  • Fossil pollen and modern vegetation plots
    
  • Functional traits (e.g. height, SLA, wood density)
    
  • Climate data from past and present
• Obstacles:
  • Scattered formats, inconsistent taxonomies, climate rasters
    
  • Multiple tools, steep learning curves, and limited reproducibility

🔓The Shortcut

• Imagine answering this question with just a few lines of code
  
• Use {vaultkeepr} to:
  • Access vegetation, trait, and climate data simultaneously
    
  • Filter by time range, spatial boundaries, and taxa
    
  • Harmonise taxonomy and calculate community-weighted traits
• Minimal code, maximum reproducibility

🆙LevelUp: VegVault

• A global SQLite database integrating plot-based paleo- and neo-vegetation data
  
• Links to functional traits, soil properties, and climate variables
  
• Built for millennial-scale ecological analyses
  
• Fully open-source and reproducible infrastructure

🗃️The Source Code

• Data sources: Neotoma, BIEN, sPlotOpen, TRY, CHELSA, WoSIS
  
• Taxonomic harmonisation via GBIF and {taxospace}
  
• Abiotic data mapped to spatio-temporal grids
  
• Modular, version-controlled pipelines with metadata

💎Key Innovations

• Temporal integration of paleo and contemporary data
  
• Plot-based vegetation records (not just species occurrences)
  
• Sample-specific climate and soil context
  
• Standardised taxonomy and harmonised trait domains

🛠️Controls

• Access via {vaultkeepr} R package
  
• SQL-free, tidyverse-compatible interface
  
• Fully reproducible workflows via GitHub and Zenodo

💡Side Quests

• Additional use cases:
  • Explore biome transitions and trait shifts
    
  • Test trait–environment relationships across time
    
  • Quantify ecological novelty and functional turnover
    
  • Reconstruct long-term diversity patterns
    
  • Investigate trait-based community assembly

🏆Summary

• VegVault = open, robust, time-spanning vegetation research platform
  
• Designed for reproducible, interdisciplinary ecological synthesis
  
• Join the quest – the tools are ready, and the map is open!

📜Credits

• Website, ORCID, GitHub, and Lab links
  
• QR codes and short URLs for quick access
  
• Acknowledgements to collaborators, funders, and data providers

🎯Bonus Stage

• Optional backup slides:
  • VegVault database schema